Cue the outrage of the religious right — 3,2,1….
Personally, I don’t think the performance was obscene. Yes, at certain moments Prince’s guitar looked phallic, but only at certain very brief moments. One clever thing about this Superbowl stunt by Prince is that it illuminates the fact that claims of "obscenity" say as much about the mind of the receiver of the message as the sender.
That said, I thought Prince’s performance (the whole part of the Super Bowl I watched) was good for two reasons:
- As far as I could tell, he wasn’t lip-synching
- He managed not to electrocute himself